


Day Scholar

by elviaprose



Category: David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 04:44:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13967580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/pseuds/elviaprose
Summary: Young David Copperfield is exceedingly well liked and well respected in Canterbury. Isn't it strange, Uriah Heep observes, that he has had no intimate friendships with the other boys, in all his time at school?





	Day Scholar

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to x_los for the beta!

I had, in my early days at Mr. Wickfield’s, been searching the library for something to read when Uriah had come up beside me and begun looking at the books as well. 

"Mr. Wickfield," he had said, speaking nearly into my ear, "has also extended me the same kindness of his library--though I know I must umble in what I choose. There are many books here that are not for an umble person, Master Copperfield. I have not seen you much in my office--I had thought I should see you again. If I was not diverting company, I umbly apologize, and if there was any error I committed that I might correct, only name it--"

I had assured him there was not, and that I liked his company. He had said that in that case he would certainly be honored if I should come to him now and again to lighten his spirits. I was not sure why he wished me to come, but it was clear he did, and I could see no reason to refuse him a brief visit on one out of every three nights. 

One March evening, five years having passed since his initial invitation, we were talking of my school. Usually when the subject arose, Uriah would crease up his face and ask me what scholarly attainment Master Copperfield was tilting at now, and then, upon my telling him, exclaim that it was all too deep for him, umble as he was, and that would be then end of that. But on this occasion, he asked me something else, something that touched a particular sore spot of mine: who was my most intimate and favorite friend among the other boys?

I confessed I had no companion of that sort. How he exclaimed at that! That I should be without such an attachment! The cause, he said, scraping his chin, must be that I was a day scholar, for when I was the sort of boy that I was, what else could it be? Why didn’t I ask my Aunt if I could board at the school, for wasn’t there room enough there now for me if I liked? Surely I didn’t think she’d mind if I asked! 

I thought then that Uriah would have liked for me to leave Wickfield’s house, perhaps because he felt my connection to Wickfield made me a likely future partner in Wickfield’s firm, and had put the idea in my mind for that reason. Even if I had thought Uriah to be both disinterested and correct in his judgment of the cause of the problem, I could not have accepted his solution, for boarding at Doctor Strong’s was simply out of the question. Mr. Wickfield had expressed to me many times what a good thing he thought it was for me to be in the house, and I felt keenly that it would wrong his long hospitality to me to leave before time. And how I would miss dear Agnes! It seemed curious to me that Uriah did not seem to understand that I should feel such obligations. 

I would of course have cut my own throat before telling him that what came between me and the other boys had little to do with whether I boarded, and much to do with the simple truth that (whatever sort of boy I was) from my first day to my last with Doctor Strong, I would never forget that the other boys had only ever done their Latin in school, and never to entertain a pawnbroker. Nor supped on beer, or tied rags around their feet as I had for a long walk on a dusty road out of London. 

What Uriah said then was not at all what I was expecting. In fact, I was perfectly astounded. 

“You know I haven’t much knowledge of such matters, being umble, but I think, yes, I do think those other boys that board at the school,” said Uriah, “they creep into one another’s beds at night and put their arms about each other and kiss and fondle and frig and sometimes even sod each other. But not you, you ain’t a party to all that, and that’s why you aven’t an intimate friend in the day hours.”

“Nonsense!” I exclaimed with force. But it was not precisely nonsense, after all. Many of the boys at school did indeed get up to such things together at night, and some even in the daytime, tucked away in little corners when the opportunity afforded itself, and I never joined in. That I did no such thing with anyone was an effect rather than a cause of my feeling myself rather apart from the others, but it was true enough that they did it and I did not.

Uriah regarded me with such a knowing look as could not be argued with if I were the Chief Justice of England. 

“Not sodding,” I said briskly. “They don’t sod each other at all.” Uriah grinned, and then he laughed outright, and then he rubbed his hands over his sharp knees where they jutted out. A long, silent pause followed, in which we looked at each other.

“Well there’s just the thing for it, then, ain’t there!” he said.

I expected he would go on, but he did not. "What was?" I asked at last.

“Why, we’ll do all they do and more. We’ll frig and kiss and play all sorts of pleasant games of that sort, and what’s more, we’ll sod each other in spite of them! We’ll do them one better than they do themselves, won’t we Master Copperfield?” 

I had not thought to do such a thing with Uriah. Sod him! Uriah sod me! It was incredible to me that he could pluck such a suggestion out of the air as he had, as if he could as readily commit himself to such an act as kill a fly.

“It’s improper,” I said. 

“Ain’t it!” he said with enthusiasm. I had not expected Uriah to admit to such a charge, and with such evident satisfaction. Where he had played the corkscrew with me before, now he played a tough bit of cork, and with this phrase wedged himself in quite snugly and stoppered me right up. 

When I had been silent for a moment, he continued. 

“Of course it is, but I’d wager they only don’t do it because they’re pretty canny sorts, the boys at your school. I hear tell it’s the best thing of all, but it takes a long while to work the cock in.” I flushed so furiously at this lewd phrase, and at its proximity to the figure I’d just thought of for him, that I thought I might never blanch again. “And even if they had the patience for it, which perhaps they don’t--for they don’t need so much of that particular virtue you know, as other umbler sorts of boys do--it’s pretty hard to keep quiet. They can’t go whimpering and squealing--oh dear me no, for they know what’s like to get them caught. Your room’s a ways off from the other bedrooms and you’ve got it all to yourself--no long rows of beds full of of eavesdroppers to trouble us.”

I considered it. He was a strange sort of person, and I was not quite sure I liked him, but I found myself enjoying myself with him just then, and rather more swayed by the proposal than I would have thought possible. He had never once before put me in mind of Steerforth, but in his cheerful agreement that he was making quite a shocking overture, I found myself surprised and curiously reminded of my childhood idol, who had always impressed me with refusing to be afraid of anything (though I later reflected that he really had had rather less to fear than the rest of us), or to be abashed by anything that he wanted of the world. And I was lonely, and if I had no grievance at all with the boys at school, and no desire to outmatch them or get the better of them in such things, I liked the idea, even so, of having a particular friend with whom I could take secret pleasures.

“Well,” I said, and he hung on my words, wringing his hands hard together, “all right.”

“Oh lord, what a day this is,” he exclaimed, writhing himself off his stool, as he had that first day I’d met him. His eyes did not meet mine, but rather looked lidlessly down, their expression out of my view. “Oh Master Copperfield, you’ll be pleased you’ve consented to it, you’ll be terribly, delightfully pleased you’ve taken up with me. You will, oh, you will indeed.” 

The conversation had made my whole body hot and curiously roused, and so these expressions impressed themselves on me as they might not have done otherwise. I adjusted my collar, and the cuffs at my wrists, and drew in a breath to steady myself. I saw him notice, and twitch a little as if in sympathy with my discomfort. If the matter were soberly judged, I could not be sure how pleased he really was, for he often carried on about all manner of things, but I could see no reason for him to make such a suggestion if he did not indeed want both a friend and a little pleasure of that kind. I thought of what an unfortunate thing it was that Uriah had no fellows but me and determined to be a little kinder to him, where I could. 

“I think I shall be,” I said, and smiled at him. 

He did not smile back in turn--he had never yet smiled at me in his life, but after he put out the candle, he offered me his hand in the dark. By this time I knew the arrangement of his little round room thoroughly, and there was no danger of falling over his stool as I had on the day of our first encounter. Still I took it in mine, and he wrung it a little, sighed queerly, and then led me quite safely out.

***

Our first night together, he stripped completely. I had not expected it, and I had not expected his manner of doing it, either; there was something in the way he undid those decent black clothes that reminded me of the way a boy would strip if he were about to go swimming. I sometimes forgot to think of Uriah as near my age, and then forgot I had forgotten until some detail of that sort reminded me. I wondered if Uriah had ever been swimming--it was a feat to imagine it, and yet perhaps he had. I imagined him standing flat footed on the bank of the Stour and then plunging himself in, gasping at the cold and then laughing, splashing his long arms, calling for some fellow to join him, for the cold weren’t so bad as it seemed.

He was quiet now, no calling or cajoling, just silently waiting for me. And while he waited for me, he stood, writhing hesitatingly, not getting into my bed, or sitting down on top of it. He did no more than put a lank hand down and stroke it over the empty blankets. Leaning over my bed like that, he put me in mind of a boy at a swim no longer. Now he was some novice messenger of death who, overeager, had taken not just the soul of a man or woman whose time had come, but the body, too, and was wondering over the mistake.

I tried not to look too long at his long ghastly body, for it seemed not quite polite.

“We are all naked before the Lord, I think,” he said, not looking at me once again, “and if we are, the Lord I’m sure don’t judge our bodies for their imperfections. It’s an example to follow. I’ll follow it, to be sure, with you, and won’t mind anything I see. But there’s no rush for you to undress--keep in your clothes a while, if you like, and come into the bed that way. I don’t mind that. It becomes you to be shy with me, though it wouldn’t become me to be so with you. Umble sorts ought to be circumspect, Master Copperfield, but not reticent, and you can certainly have a good look at me if you like. I’m not the least bit handsome of course, but you knew that, didn’t you?” I did look at him, as he had bade me. He was rubbing his chin hard, and had his eyes down, and I thought he did perhaps look a little nervous, but also sly as the devil. Though he had a lanky awkward frame, his shoulders were not as high and ill looking as I had thought them. It was only that he hunched them up. I felt a little afraid to touch him, as I would have felt afraid to touch anybody, but I was also quite interested and eager.

I was not sure if he had contrived to get me out of my clothes and into the bed with his speech and action, but if he had he succeeded quite well. I felt I could not remain dressed without putting myself above him and without thinking myself less brave than he.

I let him have a good look for the sake of fair play and then put the candle right out.

“Do anything you like with my umble self, Master Copperfield,” he said. “Anything at all you like.” I could not resist the opportunity to survey the new terrain thoroughly, as though he was fresh snow (he was white enough for it), and I was making tracks in it. It seemed an incredible liberty to be permitted to touch another person like that. Before I knew it I was kissing his ribs, which jutted out so sharply, until I found the place where they ended, which was a bit softer, and more padded. He writhed a little, but not hard, and I licked with my tongue and bit with my teeth against that tight stretched skin, unsure whether I was trying to enjoy myself or make him happy, but liking it all terribly, until he let out a sort of strangled cry. It was curious, for there had been nothing I had done in that moment to prompt such a thing. It seemed rather that the feeling in him had been building until it suddenly broke from him. 

He looked at me but in the dark I could not see much of the expression on his face. I had my hand on his chest and felt his breath making it rise and fall quite fast.

I was swelling with interest, but tried to keep from pressing anything hot and hard against him. I squirmed around to keep that secret, but like any secret kept in Uriah’s presence, it was soon found out.

“Oh I don’t worry about that, Master Copperfield, press yourself right up to me if you like. And, you know, if you are curious about my cock, you can make inquiries there,” he said. The language he used was shocking--and a great relief to me. I felt that so long as he was fearless of scandal we were safe somehow, from any very great shame. 

It was incredibly strange to me to touch him like that, yet I liked doing it. He was soft and warm and I could slide my hand up and down a good long ways. I liked to feel how long he was by grasping him at the base and then sliding all the way up. He liked it too--he seemed to like it much more than I had ever liked touching myself, which I could understand, for the whole thing was terribly exciting. Although perhaps also his organ was itself more sensitive than mine in general, for there was one little trick that I had liked to practice on myself that sent him tumbling straight out of the bed, gasping like I had set a brand to his skin instead of just my hand. After we had recovered from that incident and I had given him many apologies and fussed over him a little, which he quite encouraged, I resumed again. 

“May I--I,” he was breathing too hard to speak evenly. “Master Copper--field, may I return the--favor and touch you as well?” he asked. It seemed to me a natural progression of things, and yet it was quite a thing to agree to, I realized, as he licked his own fingers and then applied them to me. The slickness was new and strange, and it was his hand, and it felt terribly good and I nearly finished off that instant.

“Oh Christ, I didn’t ever think to do it like that,” I said, a bit supidly. 

“Stop a minute,” he breathed, as I careened towards the peak of pleasure, still touching him, too, and still liking that as well as anything else. “Let’s count out a minute’s time.” I let go of him, which drew a small noise from him, and then he began counting aloud, so slowly I thought two seconds must be passing for every one he counted. I breathed in the smell of him, which was faintly of paper. I found it pleasantly steadying. When he had counted to ten, I put my arms around his chest and tucked my head beneath his chin. I was twitching and overheated and hungry to be touched anywhere and everywhere, and yet his counting slowed even further once I had put my arms about him. It was a habit with him, to talk slowly just when one wanted him to hurry, and at first I thought he was laughing over it. Then I thought perhaps it was simply that his breath was still not coming evenly, and he was not laughing after all. Indeed, he seemed to draw into himself. He seemed still aware of me, of my movements, of my arms around him, and yet not so that he was responsive to me, not judging how I was taking the delay. I had the curious thought that he was aware of me in the way a person would be aware of a favorite food he was eating. 

“Now about the sodding,” Uriah said, when he had done counting at last. “What do you say to tonight? What’s there to stop us?” His arms tightened around me. “There’s a way, I think, some have of making a thing difficult by considering it as something that’s to be worked up to and toiled after, when it could after all be easy and natural as anything to just take it up. Didn’t you ever think so, Master Copperfield?” 

“Yes,” I said. “I do suppose I have thought so often enough at school.” Doctor Strong, for all that he was the most patient, kindly, and gentle scholar, for all that he led us by example to be good to each other as well as to learn readily, did have a way of making anything we did extraordinarily more complicated than it had needed to be. It surprised me, though, to hear Uriah Heep say such a thing, when he always claimed to me to be the sort who had a hard struggle over his law books by virtue of not being a gifted person.

“Then the question is, who goes first now at doing the deed, the umble clerk or andsome gentleman?” he asked, with a quick squeeze of my hand. 

“You can,” I offered. I was too anxious about not doing the thing well to accept what seemed the more active and role of the two of them, for all that he claimed it needn’t be difficult.

“If you’re certain, Master Copperfield?” I was not sure why he asked. I thought perhaps he would have preferred for me to take the lead, or perhaps he hesitated to plunge ahead with the thing he most wanted, only to find I would have preferred that he hadn’t.

“Yes,” I said. 

He surprised me by stroking his hand up the nape of my neck and through my hair, but I quickly realized he had done it to a purpose, to make his hand slick. In those days I applied far too much bear’s grease to my hair, and with the help of that product he could put one finger softly inside of me without trouble. I gasped like I was being plunged into cold water, but the shock was gentler than that, a sort of pleasant spasm that trembled through me, repeated again and again as he moved that finger.

“Ain’t I fortunate that you board here,” he said, and this time I did think he really was laughing.

At length he urged me onto my hands and knees, and then slowly pushed in. All breath went out of me and I wanted to cry out in pain but could not. But then, as I drew in air, even then I was in an instant entirely blind with pleasure, blind with it but not mute, for I was making sounds without intending them, and my whole body was trembling furiously, and then we both reached a hard, helpless end to it nearly together--I do not know who surrendered first, to this day. 

I was too astounded even to blush at first, though I did remember to do it when he had gone. 

***

A Retrospect

More and more often Uriah comes into my bed, until it is nearly every night that he does it. Sometimes after we have done with taking our pleasure we prop ourselves up side by side and I put my arm about him, and he lies against me as I read to him a little out of my Complete Shakespeare. I do all of the voices I can think of for him, and he often laughs his silent laugh or exclaims rapturously over it. He always creeps away before midnight has come. But now he begins to come into my bed in the mornings too. In the very early dark, long before he should need to be awake, he eases himself oh-so-carefully into my blankets. His carefulness is mostly in vain, if he does it to avoid disturbing me, as he is ice all over, and the shock when our bodies meet is as great as if he has shaken me awake. Even so I cannot quite find it in myself to ask him not to, for I love the feel of him against me and the way he sighs with complete pleasure at the warmth and curls himself against me until he heats up like a coal. 

“What are you dreaming of then, Master Copperfield?” He asks, and I answer back, though not without embellishments and emendations if my dreams should happen to have been too dull, or too muddled. I tell him of pirates and highwaymen and adventurers. If dreams of Uriah taking me or of my taking him have come upon me as they often do, as sort of warm half-memories of what we have done, or hazy anticipations of what will follow the next night, I tell him that also. We talk, lazy and near sleep, about anything and everything, and then, after his vigorous promises that he won’t be going off to the land of nod himself and we were never going to be discovered that way, I drop back into a doze. He insists that I be the one to sleep, though I urge him to let me take it in turns with him. Were his eyes not ever and always so lidless and sleepless, I might fear discovery too much to trust him to it, for I do not know whether the matter would be quite made light of, or if I should be put out of Wickfield’s house and made the subject of a scandal, and Uriah for his part be cast coldly out of his employment. But my faith in his wakefulness is ever repaid, and not a soul in the world knows of it but us. It bcomes difficult to believe that I had ever thought of Uriah as anything but a friend. I can hardly remember why I had not been certain if I liked him. I like so much to watch him, and now I often turn his phrases over in my mouth during the day, like cherry stems.

**

“Was it very hard, that year? The one that came between the loss of your father and when you came to work here, for Mr. Wickfield?” I asked one night as we were lying in bed.

He looked at me with some surprise, his brow wrinkling. I had grown quite fond of kissing him there, and I did so now, biting a little, and making him squirm pleasantly against me. 

“I never told you there was any such year of my life, Master Copperfield.” 

“And you don’t think I can remember a thing you’ve told me and make an inference?” I said, a little peevish with him, and pressing my teeth a little harder into his forehead.

“Oh it ain’t that. You’re clever enough, I know. It’s a question of taking an interest.” 

“Well I didn’t like you then as I do now,” I said, and there he interrupted with a little sound, “but even then I took an interest. And I had reason to notice it, for it made me wonder if we might share a thing in common. I thought perhaps you’d understand as no one else in the world could, but I was afraid to confess it to you. I was too ashamed. They say that when a tree is starved of water, you can see the mark of it in the rings, and thereby know the year that it happened. I have wondered if perhaps, if we were two trees, then our ten-year rings would each be marked just the same.” 

I confessed to him, as I had to no other person, what it had been like working in the factory, before I came to my aunt, how hopeless it had been.

“Oh, poor Master Copperfield!” he said, and in his voice I thought there might be something almost like happiness--perhaps because I had confided in him, or perhaps because I had suffered. I thought his words held some true sympathy too, though, although I still found his moods difficult to piece together. He put his arms around me and pulled me up close to him. 

“I wished I could go back to school, even if I were to be beaten every day by a hypocrite and a tyrant,” I told him.

“Why so did I,” Uriah said, with a strange little chuckle. “But to return to your earlier point about the trees, I shouldn’t say so. No, I shouldn’t say we were quite the same in that way.” 

I had thought he would go on to explain, but he did not for some time.

“Why not?” I asked. “Won’t you say any more?”

“Why, what a corkscrew is Master Copperfield tonight,” Uriah said. “It ain’t the same, Master Copperfield, because you’ve had your schooling and had your meat and drink and grown up a proper fine stripling--or should I say sapling--in the end, while I ain’t. I’m burred trunk to bough, and have had no learning from any soul save good Mr. Tidd, these many years. It ain’t just that I’m poor, Master Copperfield, that puts me apart from you. It’s that the world condemns me for being poor, and for looking like what I am. And yet it hates me double for trying to make myself anything but poor!”

The fury in him surprised me. What he said, too, surprised me. I had not thought of his situation in that way. I am ashamed to say I had never really thought before that moment that Uriah felt himself to be, so much against his will, marked top to toe with want and poverty. 

“It isn’t right,” I said to him. “It really isn’t right.”

“Never mind that, Master Copperfield,” he said. “Let it be what it is.” He stared off across my room at the far wall, and I could not tell what he was thinking. It seemed he struggled with himself quite hard, over what I did not know. I thought he might be angry with me, but then after a little while more he asked for me to read to him from Shakespeare, which I did, and he stayed if anything a little longer than he was accustomed to. Then he was back in my bed in the morning, just as usual, curling his cold appendages around mine.

I told him my dream of a great castle, which seven giants were building, stone by stone, letting them fall heavily upon each other so that they shook the whole world each time a new block was put down. 

“Then the shaking became too much for the earth,” I told him, “and made the sea come spilling up in a great wave, which crashed down over my head." 

"Were you frightened?" Uriah asked. 

"It was a little frightening, but now it’s quite pleasant to think of, here in my warm bed, with your arms about me,” I told him. 

“Sleep a little more now,” he said, “and if you return to the dream, as I know you sometimes do, remember that you can’t be drowned.”

“Are you sure you must insist on being the one to keep awake? You know you needn’t act like a servant with me, Uriah,” I said abruptly. “You must know that. I would be as careful not to sleep as you are, and I would do it very gladly.”

Oh no, he protested quite violently, no that wasn’t necessary. And yet I pressed him to give me some reason I should not, until his quiet reply surprised me:

“I like to do it, Copperfield--more than nearly anything.”

***

I was now only weeks from finishing with school forever. I was not a child any longer, and was not readily deceived, by myself or Uriah or anyone, as to what he had become to me. 

“Uriah,” I said to him one morning, taking him by surprise as he pressed himself into my bed, “we have thrown in our lot quite firmly, I think. It’s no schoolboy game with us, is it? ”

“Well, Master--or should I say Mister--Copperfield, I am no schoolboy to be sure, but it is surely done in such a spirit, Master Copperfield?” he protested. 

“When I finish school, wherever I go in the world, I should like you to be there with me,” I said. 

“You speak it so crisp and proper, it sounds like a legally taken oath. And yet I don’t think you really mean that. You don’t really like me, do you? Perhaps you’ve grown a little accustomed to our intimacies, and attached to having something in the way of a friend, however umble a one?” 

“I do like you, Uriah,” I said, beginning to grow angry with him. “But when you talk in this way I begin to think perhaps you don’t really like me.”

“Well, perhaps I don’t,” Uriah said sharply.

I felt quite stricken. “Can that be true?” I asked. “Uriah, I--” I began

“Of course it can’t!” he interrupted me. “You must know that it can’t be. I love you, Copperfield,” Uriah said, and turned away from me and clenched his hands into my bedclothes. This profession struck a sharp, hard, and yet welcome blow to my chest.

He had not finished speaking, however. “I have battered my own ‘art for you, battered and battled it hard, for half of it wished on you a harder life, a poorer life than I have had, and than you have had, certainly, and wished that your sufferings had gone on, and thought that if you were a beggar, I should smile at it. And the other half of my ‘art loved you tenderly and wanted nothing better than your happiness, nothing in the world. And just like Hamlet preaches I have cut my heart into two and tossed away the worser part of it. I’ve repented nothing in my life but wishing ill on you.”

“Nothing?” I said, my head dizzy for a moment with all he had said.

“Nothing,” he said with wretched force. “But you won’t keep me by you when you’ve seen more of the world, and fallen in love with a pretty woman, and found friends more suited to you. I don’t think you’ve thought of what it would be to throw your lot in with me. What can I offer you? My best opes are with Wickfield’s firm. I am not likely prosper elsewhere. All our shared acquaintance would talk of us and wonder what hold that shabby shambling lawyer Uriah Heep ad over the charming David Copperfield. It would take time for anyone to suspect the nature of our connection, but if we remained together beyond our youth, it might become plain to those who considered the matter, and then it would hang on you like a curse. For one you really loved it might be worth all that, but you don’t like me as I like you. You never, never could, not for all the world. You condescend to me now, for it’s pleasant to you to do it, and makes you feel yourself to be a generous sort of person, and a little less lonely, and you’d like to keep at it for a time, but really it’s best we put this other talk aside. It’s one thing to creep into your bed and try to find a little happiness, but I know my limits and what’s within em. I ain’t one to snatch a crumb and take it for a cake.”

“Nonsense,” I said. I grabbed him hard by the shoulders and dragged him against me, held him so desperately tight that he cried out. “I will be loyal to you, I won’t leave you. I am sorry I ever said that you need not be humble unless you wished to be. You will think I am speaking just as foolishly now as I did then, but I really believe you are wracking yourself needlessly. I swear on my life it will not be so bad as all that. My friends will like you, for your own sake and for mine. What may be a little surprising at first to some will soon seem ordinary enough to anybody with sense. We are friends from youth, and not far apart in age or prospects--really, your prospects are not so bad as all that. You are a lawyer, and a very clever one at that. If we are poor for a while, we will know that we are poor because we defy the world together, and we shall be poor and happy. Tell me you see that I do love you, that you know that I do, that you’d hurt me worse than anything if you didn’t come with me. ”

“I won’t say what isn’t true,” Uriah replied with fury such as I had never heard from him before.

“It is true,” I said. He was fully dressed for the coming day. Unable to reach much of him, I tore the handkerchief from his neck and bit at the soft white skin there with a heated mouth. I could feel his throat working beneath my lips as I kissed it. “You hold such a fascination over me, in what you say and what you like and what you hate--the words you choose, the way you reason things out, and your terrible secret cleverness. Your power over yourself. How I can never tell if you’re laughing when we’re together because you lose your breath so easily when I touch you. And the smell of you like paper, and your sharp bones underneath my hands. Your hands. I could watch them all day, scraping and twining and grasping at anything--a doorframe, a desk. I love to hold your dear body close to me. And I love how you touch me. And your compliments that you don’t mean and the ones that you do, and all the times you can’t help but be honest with me.”

“Stop,” Uriah panted furiously. “Stop, it’s murder.”

He opened his mouth in a perfectly silent shriek of agony and actually convulsed on the bed for a moment. Then he rolled over, grabbed the ruined neckerchief where it lay, wrapped it around his hand, shoved it into his mouth, and bit down as hard as he could. With absolute fury in his face, he gestured for me to continue.

I laughed with relief. He believed me, or would come to. He wanted my love too much to refuse it when I offered it. Even if he believed I lied, he could not stop himself asking for more. 

“You are my best friend in all the world,” I told him,“ tugging uselessly at his clothes with shaking hands, “and I think we shall always keep each other safe, and looked after, and happy.” 

We took our pleasure as we spoke, thrusting and twining ourselves together, him still in his clothes. “Please, make me believe it,” Uriah would say, and I would try my utmost to do it, and then he would beg me to stop, and then ask again to be convinced, until he reached such a pitch of anxiety that I almost feared for his health. 

We held each other a long time, perhaps an hour. 

“I think I nearly believe it,” he said at last. 

I looked at him, sprawled across my bed. His face was streaked with tears. His clothes might be put right by a good wash, but they were certainly not right now, and the time was much later than usual. 

“You really aren’t at all decent,” I said to him.

Uriah agreed. 

“Well,” I said, “Why not keep yourself hidden in my room? I will tell Mr. Wickfield that you staggered in with the message that you were too ill to work today, and, also being too ill to stagger back out again, are resting in my room. I doubt he’ll give that a second thought. Meanwhile you can stay tucked away in here, and I shall bring you up food to eat when I am not at school and you can have a lovely lazy time all day.” 

“Oh that is exceedingly generous of you, Master Copperfield,” said Uriah, with a voice that was close to giving him up for a lost cause and abandoning him where he lay. He allowed a pause. Knowing him quite well by now, I thought he must be about to begin an elaborate protest. And well he knew I thought so. Instead, however, he closed his eyes, and seemed to fall into an instant and deep sleep, snores coming loudly out of his nose and throat. 

“You really are just as funny as anyone in the world when you wish to be, Uriah,” I said, my own body tiredly protesting against how fond I felt of him, warning me it hadn’t the strength for it. “Even if you don’t seem to be capable of so much as a smile.” 

His lank legs kicked with his pleasurable distress at this compliment, spoiling the image of deep sleep completely. Then he resumed his pretense with such commitment that it was almost as though it had never been disrupted, except for the faint smile on his lips.


End file.
